“Trenberth says, in fact, the planet has continued to warm during this time — but the heat has been flowing into the oceans, which have a vast capacity to absorb it.”

“The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries. But heat absorbed closer to the surface can easily flow back into the air. That happened in 1998, which made it one of the hottest years on record.”

“Trenberth says since then, the ocean has mostly been back in one of its soaking-up modes.”

“They probably can’t go on much for much longer than maybe 20 years, and what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again,” he says.”

So something magically happened 15 years ago that caused hot water to sink to the bottom of the ocean and in about 5 years more magic will happen that will cause the hot water deep in the ocean to rise to the surface.

Funny, but about 6 years ago I read that even though earth’s atmosphere had heated up, ocean temps had not. And though Arctic ice was melting, Antarctic ice was amassing larger and larger. Ever read that, Comsmoscon? I can’t remember where…

This file photo shows the main the road in Majuro, the capital of Marshall Islands, being flooded from high tides and ocean surges, in December 2008. The low-lying islands, a Pacific atoll chain, rises barely a metre above sea level.

Very strange….I’m open water qualled and have never encountered this phenomenon. And in the Navy I was blessed to travel throughout the Med Adriatic and Pac. I’m now by the Gulf and *shocked not here either .

QUOTE:
“Did NPR ask if this magical ocean heat has been located? No.
Did NPR ask why the oceans decided to start storing heat 15 years ago? No.
Did NPR ask why the laws of physics have stopped working and hot water now sinks below colder water? No.”

The second most important rule of interviewing, negotiating or law, (after “never ask a question to which you do not already KNOW the answer”), is “never ask a question to which you don’t WANT an answer”.

Warming us up a couple of degrees centigrade only gets us back to where the current heat spike (called the Holocene) out of the on going several million year old glaciation (ice age) began (i.e. the top of the spike was at the initial warming): http://cdiac.ornl…lot5.gif The spikes occur regularly every 100K years and last about 10K years. We’ve been in the Holocene for about 11K years. We’re due to sink back into a glaciation. The drop in temperature will be about 10-11 degrees centigrade. It’s obvious that the problem for our civilization is cooling not warming. We need more warming not less. If the oceans are storing heat, great! They’ll be useful when we’re living on top of an ice shield.